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27 August 2010

I abhor unraveling a project, no matter how much it may be screwed up. I am one who doesn't like to fail. Once I start knitting, I expect to carry it through to the end. Sure, sometimes I will put it down, carry on with something else, but usually, by and by, it gets picked back up again and eventually knit into its proper shape. And, if by some chance my gauge is not quite right, that is if I have tried to check gauge in the first place *cough*, a little water and blocking can usually put it into shape.

However, no matter how many ways you stretch that scarf, chances are it is not going to magically become that sweater you were actually planning on knitting at the beginning. Sometimes you see that your rows are uneven, you dropped a stitch, you lost your place in the pattern. If you are lucky, you can save it and make it either into what it is supposed to be, or at least cobble it together into a suitable piece that while is not your best, it will still be worn.

But sometimes you pick up the needles only to put them down again. Mistakes are made that cannot be corrected: you run out of your dye lot, you have dropped so many stitches you cannot pick them up, you realize the colors don't actually go together, the yarn scratches your skin instead of sliding soft across it. Sometimes you realize, too late, you don't have enough yarn to complete it. Stitches blur and balls unwind; you realize the only thing you have left to do, before you take all of your stash and toss it out the window, swearing you will never knit again, is to unravel it. Save what you have and hope that another pattern will come along that it is better suited for. I wish I was actually talking about knitting.

This has been a summer of unraveling for myself, my family, my marriage. Stitches made over the last year have been ripped out and are currently being wound back into their separate skeins. It's not easy to unravel a knitting project that you have invested in; more difficult is unraveling the hearts and souls of people.

All this has pulled me away from this blog for a while, and a lot of the other things that used to keep me grounded and centered in my Life. I am starting to cast on again, wondering what will take shape as I make these first stitches to anchor what will be a new Life project, an unknown Path to follow. But then, aren't they all?

So, to end with a quote that I found this summer: "All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time." - Mitch Albom, Five People That You Meet In Heaven